Egypt discusses economic cooperation with South Korea and Jordan

CAIRO: International Cooperation Minister Naglaa el-Ahwany held a meeting with Choi Kyung Hwan, the South Korean Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Strategy and Finance, on Sunday to discuss economic cooperation between the two countries, Youm7 reported.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website, Egyptian-South Korean relations have boomed in the past three years, and are worth about $3.1 billion in trade volume. Of this, Egypt exports more than $900 million in goods to South Korea, and imports $2.2 billion in South Korean products.

Despite the past three years of Egypt’s unrest and political turmoil, South Korean investors offered to assist Egypt in establishing a nuclear energy program in Dabaa in 2012, and the South Korea-based electronics giant Samsung finished building a 350 million EGP ($50 million) factory in Beni Suef for the manufacture of televisions and monitors in 2013, Masrawy reported.

In March 2014, The Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) signed a $1 million grant agreement with the Egyptian Education Development Fund (EDF) to help support a vocational training center.

Ahwany also met the Minister of Planning and International Cooperation of Jordan, Imad Fakhoury, to discuss the current and the future economic cooperation between the two countries and the best ways to improve it, during the third day of the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) in Washington, D.C.

During the second day of the meetings, Ahwany signed a $27-million-loan agreement with the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) on supporting the Ain Shams specialized hospital, the university shall pay back the fund in 25-year-long installments, according to State Information Service of Egypt.

On the sidelines of the spring meetings, Masood Ahmed, the IMF’s Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department, deemed the Egypt Economic and Development Conference (EEDC,) held March 13-15, a “success.”

In its World Economic Outlook earlier this week, the IMF said Egypt’s economy is projected to grow by 4.3 percent in 2016.

The World Bank also decided to increase its investments in Egypt to $4.5 billion in the coming four years, according to the bank’s regional vice president for MENA Hafez Ghanem.